Samuel Schryver was born in Amsterdam, Holland and has one sister. His father was a wholesale tobacco merchant and before the war, Sam worked with his father.
Immediately after the Germans occupied Holland, Sam joined the Dutch Underground. For the Underground, he forged identification cards and passports and supplied them to Jewish people living in hiding.
In order to receive temporary exemption from slave labor, he worked in a Jewish hospital, but escaped when the SS evacuated the hospital in 1943. He then went into hiding in an attic for 18 months before he was discovered. After he was captured and interrogated for more than two weeks, we was sent by boxcar to Westerbork Transit Camp in February 1945.
When the liberating army could be heard in the distance, Sam escaped the camp. When he finally reached the Canadian forces he brought them back to the camp to free the 876 prisoners being held there on April 12, 1945.
He remained at Westerbork after liberation, guarding SS prisoners for three months. Then he returned to Amsterdam and helped illegal Jewish immigrants in Holland reach Palestine until May 1948.
Samuel Schryver was filmed by the University of South Florida Libraries.